The Netherlands’ most popular party wants to ban all mosques

The leader of the most popular Dutch party ahead of parliamentary elections next year has said he wants to ban all Islamic symbols, mosques and the Koran from the country.

The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, has released its one-page manifesto ahead of the March 2017 legislative elections in which it calls for the total “de-Islamification” of the Netherlands.

Under PVV proposals mosques, Islamic schools and asylum centres will be closed; the borders will be shut down with a blanket ban on migrants from Islamic countries; women will be forbidden from wearing a headscarf in public; and the Koran will be banned.

Radical imams will be “banned” and criminals with dual citizenship will be deported.

Wilders said: “I am very proud of the draft election manifesto. The PVV is fighting Islam, wants to close the borders of the European Union and to give all the billions we save back to the people. My message to Netherlands: Netherlands must again be ours.”

A poll by IsposMori earlier this month found if the elections were held today Wilders’ party would win 27 out of the 150 seats to become the Dutch parliament’s largest single party.

By contrast the ruling Liberal Party would get 25 seats – down from the 41 it won in 2012, Bloomberg reported.